


to be a man on a hill

by misandrywitch



Category: The Black Tapes Podcast
Genre: Character Study, Dads and daughters, Family Dynamics, Post 'About a Boy', what do you know Coralee.... what do you know
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-03
Updated: 2016-08-03
Packaged: 2018-07-29 00:37:31
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,217
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7663336
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/misandrywitch/pseuds/misandrywitch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>From time to time, people describe him and throw around the word “visionary.” Strand is pretty sure that isn’t what they mean.</p>
            </blockquote>





	to be a man on a hill

He prides himself in dealing in facts.

There isn’t, he says over and over again, any point in believing anything that can’t be weighed and measured against the immutably reassuring consistency of the scientific process. Things are, or they aren’t -- and if they are and you can’t explain why, then all that means is that you haven’t done enough yet. The burden of proof lies with you.

And so does the fault.

That’s something he’s sure of, one thing he doesn’t need to test at all. Humanity’s unending ability to fuck things up, to fall back into pure and unadulterated stupidity when faced with the unknown, the confusing, the strange or scary or uncertain. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Coralee used to tease him about it “(oh, Richard Strand, Richard Dawkins”) and from anyone else it would have felt mean, but from her it was endearing. And a little mean. She’d always been good at both of those things. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When he’d told her about the dream, the one from the night before he found Bobby Maims, she hadn’t laughed. He had -- a little drunk and young and in love, wanting to impress her, tell her something private and strange. That much later, it felt funny. Sometimes, it felt like something that happened to somebody else. 

Some tale. Some private secret. Three people can keep a secret if two of them are dead, right? Isn’t that how it goes? 

Coralee hadn’t laughed. 

“You had a dream?” she said. 

“I was a teenager,” he said. “It wasn’t real.”

“But you were right. You found him.”

“Somebody would have, eventually.” 

“But you did.” 

He kissed her, and she’d tasted like the bottle of red they’d been drinking. He hadn’t tried to argue. He had, after all, found the body. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

From time to time, people describe him and throw around the word “visionary.” Strand is pretty sure that isn’t what they mean. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

He doesn’t find her body. Maybe, he thinks sometimes, it’s because she has no body to find. 

“There are more things in heaven and earth, Richard.” She’d say that with a grin, baiting him. 

“Then show me,” he’d say. “Prove it.” 

“Maybe someday I will.” 

He’d almost wanted to believe her, once or twice. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

He sees shadows in the corners of his vision and he knows it’s because Alex Reagan won’t stop talking to people who see shadows in the corner of their vision. 

You only see it because you’re expecting to. Rinse, repeat. If you say something over and over often enough, does it become instinctive? Down to your guts, inside your bones? 

Belief is an armor. It’s not his fault he had a shitty childhood, anyway. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

That’s a metaphor for something. Everything is a metaphor for itself. Positively Biblical. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After the investigation was over, his daughter had her chosen family and he’d had his work and Coralee had nothing except a lot of secrets, ones she’d never tell because nobody could find her. He’d been sure, for some reason, that she was still alive. Meaningless patterns of random data. A gut feeling, a sense of certainty backed up by nothing. Nosebleeds on silk neckties and computer keyboards -- maybe symbolic. Maybe he needs more sleep. 

He tried a couple times, through the years. Just to see if he could do it. Not that he believed in it, anyway. Always gave himself a headache, trying to see things that weren’t there. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

He’d been pretty miserable at being a man who was married. Much better at being one beleaguered by a mysterious disappearance because by then the work had been all that mattered -- a pattern, not so meaningless -- and it had been strangely easy to think of himself as a man without a wife at all. 

So when he’d gotten her message -- about the fucking chickens, the old inside joke -- he hadn’t gone to Lake Tahoe to hunt her down. He hadn’t tried to chase after her. 

Not in a way that anybody would notice, anyway. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

He hears his daughter’s voice on the radio (podcast, says Alex Reagan, it’s digital) as she says what’s on her mind, the kind of discussion they haven’t had face-to-face in a long time. 

“Because he couldn’t find her,” she says. Strand plays the episode back over and over for a while, instead of sleeping. Digital -- it’s archived on their website. 

“You were angry with your father because he couldn’t do something an entire police force couldn’t do?” Alex asks.

“Something like that.” 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sure. Something like that.

 

 

 

 

 

 

He’s said it a thousand times -- unexplained phenomena is only unexplained until we develop the science to make sense of it. The cold spot in your room is just faulty AC. The voices you hear aren’t real. That’s a scratch on the lens. That’s electrical interference. Bring me real evidence, will you, and stop wasting my time. 

Sometimes he wonders what it would’ve been like to just accept the possibility. Easier, probably. Is it better to be a psychic or a murder suspect? Who gets more sidelong looks? 

But if he’d accepted the impossibility as fact, maybe it wouldn’t have mattered at all. After all, a good hypothesis hinges on replication. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“This isn’t going to work,” he told his daughter. 

“Try,” she’d said. Sixteen. She hadn’t laughed either. She’d believed it. “You have to try anyway.” 

“It’s not real.”

“But you found a body.” 

“I don’t think she wants to be found.” 

“There wasn’t an affair, was there,” Charlie had said, and Charlie had been right. Usually was. 

“You know that this isn’t real, right? I didn’t read anybody’s mind. I didn’t have a prophetic vision.”

“Then did you kill him? The kid?” Her face had been hard. Harder than her age deserved. 

“No.”

“Then try.”

 

 

And he had. So sue him. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

They’d hauled him into a police station, teenaged and cold, for knowing where to look. They hauled him into a police station, adulthood, for not having any clue. Both times, he’d seen shadows at the corner of his vision. 

 

He remembers the way the body had smelled, when he found it. Sixteen. The 70’s. His problems had seemed so small, sometimes, even though he’d dream of shadow figures seven feet high following his sister home from school. Rot and river water. 

 

 

 

 

 

  
  
When a man fights a war it means he stands for something. 

 

He wants to tell Alex that. He doesn’t know how. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There are more things than heaven and earth, Richard. He dreams about shadowy figures seven feet tall following Charlie home from work. Following Coralee. Following Alex, or Nic Silver, or Ruby, or the woman who makes his coffee in the city. A line of upside-down faces, black thread on wrinkled skin and blood red. The smell of rot and river water. And what lies underneath -- even worse. 

 

 

Alex is looking at him, armed with the details of his childhood -- public record, he supposes, only a matter of time really. She wants answers, she wants facts. She can’t be any older than his daughter. 

All these women, Strand thinks. His daughter, his sister, his wife. And Alex. All these questions they want answers to. 

 

 

Something shifts at the corner of his vision, in the back of his head. 

Apophenia, he thinks. The human tendency to perceive meaningful patterns within random data. 

 

 

 

 

 

  
“Leave me alone,” he says, and Alex does. 

**Author's Note:**

> actualremus.tumblr.com -- hit me up if you liked it! 
> 
> that last episode of tbt kicked my ass!!!!! i can't stop thinking about strand's psychic ability to find the boy's body vs. his inability to find coralee vs. his own skepticism and i'm going to die
> 
> title comes from 'the language of birds' by richard siken (To be a bird, or a flock of birds doing something together, one or many, starling or murmuration. To be a man on a hill, or all the men on all the hills, or half a man shivering in the flock of himself. These are some choices.
> 
> The night sky is vast and wide.')


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